A Message to Faculty: Summer Sessions I and II Moving to Remote Instruction

04.15.20

Dear Colleagues,

Over the past month, our community has seen the higher ed landscape shaped by the COVID-19 pandemic. With each development, our community and especially you, the faculty, have responded with ingenuity, resolve, and great care for our students and for each other. On April 13, Governor Newsom shared details about a three-state partnership between California, Oregon, and Washington in the form of a regional pact to recovery. The pact outlined a set of conditions that would be required for California to begin easing its stay-at-home order. The success of this measured return to normalcy depends on six critical factors, and it has become clear that LMU will not be able to offer in-person summer instruction in our usual manner.

To provide our graduate students with continuity in their programs, our undergraduates with the opportunity to catch-up, make-up, or level-up on their LMU education, and in consideration of the tremendous effort required for faculty to prepare both in-person and online versions of the same course, LMU will be offering all 2020 summer session courses solely online. This decision comes after consultation with senior administrators including the academic deans, the faculty senate executive committee, and a small working group of faculty, staff, and administrators specifically charged with examining the issues and opportunities for remote learning in the summer.

In the next few days, each of the deans’ offices will reach out to faculty scheduled to teach one of the 523 courses already listed in PROWL to determine whether they are interested in teaching the course in a remote format. Additionally, some deans plan to or have already engaged their departments to determine whether additional summer offerings would benefit students. Faculty who decide to proceed with teaching in the summer will be provided with additional training and support on online course design and best practices (this will include timely strategies). Dates for these training sessions are as follows:

April 24 – May 4
May 1 – May 11
May 22 – June 1
June 5 – June 15
May 25 – June 19 (slower paced session)
July 10 – July 20
July 24 – Aug. 3
Aug. 17 – Aug. 27
Aug. 1 – Aug. 24 (asynchronous only)

Click here to sign-up for a session. Please note that priority for the first two sessions will be given to faculty teaching in Summer I.

Additional details regarding parameters around summer teaching are available through the deans’ offices. For example, while we are maintaining the faculty pay scale for summer teaching and the minimum enrollments for courses to be offered, the modality of delivery and our limited resources this summer will necessitate changes to maximum course enrollments, new rules on splitting courses, and more detailed criteria on payments for course cancellations.

I began this communication with my admiration for your adaptability and level of collaboration during these challenging times. I end with my immense gratitude and appreciation. Thank you for your patience and understanding as we seek to best serve our students’ educational needs.

Sincerely,

Thomas Poon, Ph.D.
Executive Vice President and Provost